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US Economic Warfare #3: Ukraine, Parts 1 and 2

If the US had such a powerful non-military weapon (secondary sanctions and mafia diplomacy), why didn’t they use it when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 – the “first” Ukraine “war”?   Multiple reasons, explains says Jordan Schneider’s interview with Eddie Fishman. (1) It happened suddenly and without warning. The Americans were caught unawares, and thus had no strategy in place on how to react. They found themselves continuously reacting to events on the ground. (2) Russia was (is) a huge economy and the world’s largest exporter of fossil fuels, so the cascading effects of crippling the Russian economy were too risky. (3) The world was still recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, and Obama wasn’t sure if it was safe to rock the world’s economic boat. (4) Europe was entirely dependent on Russian oil and natural gas. “(The West) don’t know what kind of sanctions are tolerable to their own economies.” (5) Neither the US nor the EU was willing to risk all-out economic ...
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Italy #5: Vaticano

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The main item on our first full day in Italy was a guided tour of the Vatican. As I said earlier, our hotel was close to all the tourist spots of Rome, so we walked to the Vatican. Along the way, we stumbled upon an obscure, easy to miss church. Even that had such beautiful art on the walls and ceiling as well as mosaics. It would turn out to be a preview of the excellence of Italian art during all our trip.   Our group guide (about 10-12 people) was a part-time archaeologist. She pointed out that the Vatican is a separate country, not a part of the “ Republic of Italy” (I’d see that Italians everywhere take pride that since ancient times , they’ve been a republic, not a monarchy). The guides give everyone a radio receiver and earphones so you can hear the guide in crowded, noisy places even if you wander off or fall behind.   Right before going to the main part of the Vatican, our guide stopped us at an open area, and pulled out some chart paper sized prints of diffe...
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US Economic Warfare #2: Mafia Diplomacy

By 2006, the US could see that sanctions against Iran weren’t working. That’s when an American civil servant named Stuart Levey realized the US “can leverage the dollar’s role in global financial flows”, says Jordan Schneider’s interview with Eddie Fishman. What does that mean?   The US began to threaten banks – stop transactions with Iran or you won’t be allowed to trade in the US dollar. This threat worked with most banks. Why? Because the dollar is the international currency of commerce; and not having access to it would lock a bank out of any international transactions.   Notice how it is a unilateral tool? America was using its status as the international currency as a stick (obey us or else you can’t do any transactions using the US dollar).   When Obama was President, a lot of members of Congress worried he was too soft on Iran (He’d campaigned saying diplomacy was the way forward with Iran). To thwart Obama, Congress passed many legislations wrt sanct...
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Italy #4: Bonjourno, Italia!

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Foreword : When in Rome, do as the Romans do. So I will use the Italian names for places. Only in the titles of the blogs though, not in the body. The other reason for using Italian names is that the language is musical to hear, due to the vowel ending sound to most words and also the way they say it. Even “Ferrari” sounds better when pronounced by an Italian. Enough said, let’s get started. ~~   We’d planned to visit Italy in December ’23 but didn’t because the visa came just a day before the journey. Even though we’d applied it for many, many weeks in advance. We didn’t have the stomach to wait for the visa until that close to the trip (we’d also lose a lot if we cancelled that late). The next time, we applied for a French visa which came so much faster and went to France, Netherlands and Austria last year. We used that same visa for the Italy trip this year.   I’ve never cleared immigration as quickly as we did in Rome! They just check for a valid visa and don’...
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Outrageous Idea - Computers for Fun

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Back in 1956, computers were still new. They were as large as rooms and broke down frequently (they used vacuum tubes, not the IC’s of today). They consumed a huge amount of power, heated up, and had to be cooled. Interaction was via punched cards and printouts – there was no keyboard or monitors, no mouse or GUI. There were no programming languages yet, instructions had to be entered in 1’s and 0’s format. Access to computers was a precious and expensive service. One had to book slots to use the computer. Usage was designed with “efficiency” of the machine, not users. After all: “Machine time was far more valuable than human time.”   Yet, even then, writes Mitchell Waldrop in The Dream Machine , a handful of people were already imagining a world where computers could be used for fun! Reactions to this outrageous idea? “Some people thought it was wrong . They almost spoke in ethical terms. Computers are serious, you shouldn’t treat them lightly. You shouldn’t have fun with ...
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US Economic Warfare #1: How we Got Here

For a while now, America has had the ability to impose unilateral sanctions. That means no UN or international consensus is needed, the US can cut off pretty much any country from international markets. How did that happen?   The knee-jerk response may be to say the powerful can do whatever they like. But the truth is a lot more interesting, as I found via this Jordan Schneider interview of Eddie Fishman.   As recently as 2003, America was finding even UN-authorized, naval blockade enforced sanctions on Iraq were not working. The other option the US had was to prevent American companies from trading with its enemies. This was crippling for many countries, but not say, Iran with who America had almost no trade anyway. Successive US Presidents found all this frustrating.   So what changed since then? Why is it now that the US is able to cut off anyone, from Iran to Russia, whenever it likes? ~~   It starts with how the US dollar stayed on as the int...
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Italy #3: Assorted Artworks

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Our hotel in Rome was walking distance from the Vatican, and we stumbled upon this church on the way. Almost invisible, its entrance was easy to miss, appearing like the door of all the buildings next to it. Even that unknown church (Google couldn’t help) gave us a glimpse of the artworks of Italy that we would experience over the next 10 days. It even had a finely polished table at the center, which provided a perfect reflection of its ceiling. So much easier to take a pic via the reflection (us doing just that in the pic below). Later, I felt they could have created this “reflection” system too for ease of photography. But then again, no photos allowed in the Sistine Chapel.   After a point, the endless religious themed sculptures can feel repetitive. So sculptures like these in the Vatican provide a good break. Only later after seeing the Statue of David in Florence did I notice something about the goat (top-left above) – like David, the statue cannot stand on just the legs, s...
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